22/02/08 "ICH"
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President George W. Bush and his director of National
Intelligence, Mike McConnell, are telling the American people
that an unaccountable executive branch is necessary for their
protection. Without the Protect America Act, Bush and McConnell
claim, the executive branch will not be able to spy on
terrorists, and we will all be blown up. Terrorists can only be
stopped, Bush says, if Bush has the right to spy on everyone
without any oversight by courts.

The fight over the Protect America Act has everything to do with
our safety, only not in the way that Bush and McConnell assert.

Bush says the Democrats have put our country more in danger of
an attack by letting the Protect America Act lapse. This claim
is nonsense. The 30 year old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act gives the executive branch all the power it needs to spy on
terrorists.

The choice between FISA and the Protect America Act has nothing
whatsoever to do with terrorism, at least not from foreign
terrorists. Bush and his brownshirts object to FISA, because the
law requires Bush to obtain warrants from a FISA court.
Warrants mean that Bush is accountable. Bush and his
brownshirts argue that accountability is an infringement on the
power of the president.

To escape accountability, the Brownshirt Party came up with the
Protect America Act. This act eliminates Bush's accountability
to judges and gives the telecom companies immunity from the
felonies they committed by acquiescing in Bushs illegal spying.

Bush began violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)
in October 2001
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10488458/ when he spied on
Americans without obtaining warrants from the FISA court.

Bush pressured telecom companies to break the law in order to
enable his illegal spying. In court documents, Joseph P.
Nacchio, former CEO of Qwest Communications International,
states that his firm was approached more than six months
before the September 11, 2001, attacks and asked to
participate in a spying operation that Qwest believed to be
illegal. When Qwest refused, the Bush administration withdrew
opportunities for contracts worth hundreds of millions of
dollars. Nacchio himself was subsequently indicted for insider
trading, sending the message to all telecom companies to
cooperate with the Bush regime or else.
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/10/16/former-telcom-ceo-bushs-illegal-spying-began-months-before-911-attacks/

Bush has not been held accountable for the felonies he committed
and for leading telecom companies into a life of crime.

As the lawmakers who gave us FISA understood, spying on people
without warrants lets a political party collect dirt on its
adversaries with which to blackmail them. As Bush illegally
spied a long time before word of it got out, blackmail might be
the reason the Democrats have ignored their congressional
election mandate and have not put a stop to Bushs illegal wars
and unconstitutional police state measures.

Perhaps the Democrats have finally caught on that they cannot
function as a political party as long as they continue to permit
Bush to spy on them. For one reason or another, they have let
the Orwellian-named Protect America Act expire.

With the Protect America Act, Bush and his brownshirts are
trying to establish the independence of the executive branch
from statutory law and the Constitution. The FISA law means
that the president is accountable to federal judges for
warrants. Bush and the brownshirt Republicans are striving to
make the president independent of all accountability. The
brownshirts insist that the leader knows best and can tolerate
no interference from the law, the judiciary, the Congress, or
the Constitution, and certainly not from the American people
who, the brownshirts tell us, wont be safe unless Bush is very
powerful.

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison saw it
differently. The American people cannot be safe unless the
president is accountable and under many restraints.

Pray that the Democrats have caught on that they cannot give the
executive branch unaccountable powers to spy and still have
grounds on which to refuse the executive branch unaccountable
powers elsewhere.

Republicans have used the war on terror to create an
unaccountable executive. To prevent the presidency from
becoming a dictatorial office, it is crucial that Congress cease
acquiescing in Bushs grab for powers. As the Founding Fathers
warned us, the terrorists we have to fear are the ones in power
in Washington.

The al Qaeda terrorists, with whom Bush has been frightening us,
have no power to destroy our liberties. Compared to the loss of
liberty, a terrorist attack is nothing.

Meanwhile, Bush, the beneficiary of two stolen elections, has
urged Zimbabwe to hold a fair election. America gets away with
its hypocrisy because no one in our government has enough shame
to blush.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury
during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of
the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic
appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for
Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and
Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
He was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President Francois
Mitterrand.

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